The very idea seems to dissolve under the pressure of the data stream, where life and soul get translated into weightless pixels, megabytes and free shipping.

This week I took a short break from all that. Visiting Sherith Israel, Nashville’s Orthodox Jewish congregation, I encountered a far older data delivery system, an unyielding mystery.

Recently, with great ceremony, the congregation received a new Torah scroll, which is used and read during regular services.

It is an object of startling reverence. Containing the first five books of the Bible, Torah scrolls are carefully hand-written in Hebrew on calfskin parchment by a professional scribe. This one, done in Israel, took a year to complete — nearly 305,000 hand-drawn Hebrew letters in all.

A Torah scroll is assembled in sections, sewn together, and infused with as much devotion and perfection as humanly possible. Solemn regulations pertain. During the writing, whenever the scribe comes upon the name of God, he is expected to ritually bathe before inscribing the divine name. If such a scroll — weighing about 25 pounds — is dropped accidentally during a worship service, all witnesses are supposed to fast for 40 days.

Rabbi Saul Strosberg of Sherith Israel isn’t excessively worried about the distractions of contemporary life. The words of Torah haven’t changed in more than 2,000 years. They offer a far longer perspective, depths that will outlast the all-consuming trends of today.

“Belief is countercultural, the opposite of what you get on TV or in social media,” he told me. “It’s intellectually demanding. It’s warm and welcoming but not always user-friendly. It challenges you to take time, observe, study.”

Believers can draw strength from this unbroken tradition, he said. Torah itself is the most sacred object in traditional Judaism: The faith teaches that the first five books of scripture — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy — are directly inspired by God and were written down by Moses.

A connection to antiquity makes for a less lonely search for truth, he said: So many others across the generations have made the journey.

“People who only trust themselves shortchange themselves. Jews have inherited a deep tradition of interpretation, so I don’t have to figure everything out for myself.”

Holiness breaks out wherever it will. The Hebrew letters on a Torah scroll — enigmatic, beckoning — invite a visitor to envision them as a bridge between heaven and earth, an original communication that thundered down from Mount Sinai. Suddenly, the clamor of this latest century doesn’t seem so urgent.

Columnist Ray Waddle, a former Tennessean religion editor, can be reached at ray@raywaddle.com.